Social Media Tips, Tricks & Tales for the Elizabethtown College Community

6 Things You Might Not Know About the Campus Events Calendar

The College’s online calendar and scheduling system received a facelift inside out. The public-facing calender–or, the event listings–is the most noticeable change. Gone is a static page that required lots of scroll, and here is a dynamic, feature-filled tool to keep you up-to-date on what is happening on campus and when. Although the new interface was launched at the start of the academic year, we know some folks are still adjusting, so this is the first of two posts related to our interactive event system.

As long as an event is scheduled properly through the campus scheduling system, 25Live, and the event planner selected the option to promote it on the College website, it will appear on the College website on either the Campus Events calendar or the Arts & Culture calendar, a hand-curated listing containing cultural events that appeal to the public.

The new system allows for a lot of user-interaction, including some features that you might not have heard of yet. This post will introduce you to six new ways to use the online calendar smarter and even have some fun.

1. The Calendars Explained

You can access the Campus Events calendar from a few places. The header of the College’s website has a News & Events link. When you visit this link, it defaults to the Events tab (News will take you to the latest news stories; Calendar takes you to the internal 25Live listing), and events from the Arts & Culture calendar are displayed in chronological order.

As you can see from the screen shot below, you can access either the Arts & Culture calendar or the Campus Events calendar from the large banners atop the landing page,. The Campus Events calendar is the more comprehensive of the two and contains everything in the 25Live system that is open to the campus community. The Arts & Culture calendar features events with mass appeal, including performances, lectures, films, conferences, exhibits and more.

“Snippets” of information from all three calendars are also found on the Student Gateway page, as show below. The Faculty & Staff Gateway page features a sidebar feed of upcoming arts and cultural events.

A third calendar, accessible from the left-hand menu is the Academic Calendar; this contains important dates from Registration and Records.

2. Discuss the Event and/or Share on Facebook

If you are logged into Facebook while viewing either event calendar, you will be able to comment on the event. Maybe you want to tell people you’re planning on attending or just want to proclaim your excitement for the event. You have the option of sharing your comment on Facebook, but if you want to keep it limited to the event listing, just uncheck the “share on Facebook” option as shown in the example below. This is a great way to start a conversation surrounding an upcoming show, lecture, movie, etc.

3. Add to Your Calendar

How many times have you seen a poster, email or other promotion for an event only to forget about it? If you’re like me, you likely must add everything onto your Outlook or Google Calendar. Right from the event listing, you can “add to my calendar.” Once that option is clicked, you’ll be presented with a pop-up window, as show below, allowing you to add the event to your preferred calendar system. Right now, 25 Live supports Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Yahoo! Calendar and Windows Live Calendar. Depending on how your personal calendar preferences are set up, you can set reminders, too!

4. Subscribe to a Weekly Email

The online Campus Events Calendar and Arts & Culture Calendars are only effective if you remember to check them! That’s why I encourage you to subscribe to either or both of these calendars. Each Sunday evening, an email is sent out listing all of the events for the coming week and includes links to detail pages. Additionally, if you prefer, you can get this information delivered by RSS feed. There are multiple locations from which to subscribe, as show below. After you click “subscribe to email,” a window will open up allowing you to enter your email address and preferences. You can subscribe from the main events page:

Or, from here — the left-hand menu.

And then, you can make your selection when this pops up:

5. Keyword Search & Filtered Search

Some people like to scan the full calendar, while others might prefer the month filters, found atop the calendar page. However, if you’d like to drill down deeper to find events that interest you, you can filter events by type, location or sponsoring organization, as well as perform a keyword search. For example, in the example below I searched for “ware” on the Campus Events calendar and you can see the results the search returned: specific event listings for various Ware events. This is also great if you forget when an event is and who the speaker is, but remember what the topic is.

6. Get Text Reminders

You get texts from your friends. Texts with weather updates. Texts with coupons from your favorite retailer. Why not texts reminding you of tonight’s lecture? Right from the event listing, you can select “Other Event Actions;” included on this drop-down list is the option to email the event to a friend, or, as we’re stating here, to have a reminder sent to you by text message at the timing you’d like, from the day before to just 15 minutes prior to the start.

And here is the pop-up window in which you’ll provide your mobile number and other details:

But, wait! There’s More!

As we stated, this post is for everyone and anyone who wants to know what’s happening at the College. But what about the new features that remain behind the scenes? Stay tuned for a follow-up post geared toward event planners: those who put the information into the system for others to see. If you use 25 Live to schedule campus events, you don’t want to miss this post, which will be filled with tips on how to best uses this system to promote your event!